Craig Ellyard reports on NTL's agreement to screen the Football League
Communications giant NTL may have pulled out of their pay-per-view deal with the Premier League, but they are still set to play a major role in the lower divisions. The company has an arrangement with the Football League to provide an exclusive internet “portal” for the clubs outside the Premiership in return for a payment of rights fees which could total up to £65 million.
As Saltergate falls into disrepair, Chesterfield risk going under. Jonathan Westwood reports
Older than the Football League itself and currently leading the Third Division, Chesterfield are the latest club to find themselves staring extinction in the face. Home to the club since 1884, Saltergate is one of the oldest football venues in the world and it shows its age. Only the main stand has seating and the away end remains open to the elements.
Ian Plenderleith enters the egocentric world of footballers' websites to discover new blends of philosophy, art criticism and Frank Leboeuf's love of frocks
The world is not a big enough place to accommodate the egos of most professional footballers, so it is not surprising that many of them have embraced the internet as a new forum to promote themselves and their brilliant achievements. It would be wrong to avoid such sites simply on the grounds that pros have little to tell us beyond how misunderstood they are, because in many cases their homepages are not just a vehicle for self-promotion, but unintentional platforms for protracted self-prattery.
The council wants to build Hull a new ground. David Lloyd, rugby league and crashing phone shares stand in the way Craig Ellyard reports
Prior to the Taylor Report, Hull City’s Boothferry Park was one of the newest football stadiums in the country. Yet even then, though barely 50 years old, the ground once described as the Wembley of the north was but a neglected shell of its former self. After Hillsborough, new and improved stadiums sprang up all over the country, yet Boothferry and its incumbent club continued to rot. Now, though, a bright future of shiny plastic seats and a trendy new super stadium awaits City supporters. Possibly.
Football has a longer history and bigger support in a rugby-infatuated region than most people give it credit for. Grahame Lloyd reports
Welsh rugby fans might not like it – some probably won’t believe it – but Wales are currently the best-supported team in European football. Even though they lie 108th in the FIFA rankings, an average attendance of 63,000 for the last three internationals at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff has put the Welsh ahead of Italy, Germany, Spain and co-Euro 2000 hosts Holland. Cheap tickets – £10 for adults and a fiver for children – and a magnificent setting have combined to satisfy the huge appetite for football and given the lie to the longstanding but often overstated claim that the national sport of Wales is rugby.